Miyerkules, Marso 2, 2011

Floral designer finds her niche in art

Lawrence house bringing in local experts to help with variety of gardening issues

Gardeners unite.

The Lawrence House Centre for the Arts is hosting a gardening series where local gardening experts will share their blooming knowledge.

The series which runs during the month of April will feature four sessions dealing with everything from landscape design to fragrant herbs.

"If I had a dollar for every time someone said low maintenance, well ..." said Paul Churchill, landscape designer with Sipkens Nurseries on London Line.

Churchill will talk about landscape design and colour in gardens when he is the featured expert during the April 7 session.

"First words out of most people's months is low maintenance. I am going to try to make it easy and self-sufficient, generally improving their yard," said Churchill.

The landscape designer said he hopes his session will help those who attend to have the garden they want instead of just looking through magazines at the gardens they wished they had.

Ginny Schleihauf of Gardiners - and the Other Side in Mitton Village will talk about having a healthy garden in dry conditions.

"I will hopefully help them maintain a garden with a drought problem," said Schleihauf.

Using perennials will also be discussed in Schleihauf's April 14 session, where she will introduce attendees to drought-resistant perennials as well as the perennial of the year.

The April 21 session will feature water gardens. Jeff Baarschers of Degroot's Nurseries will cover planning, design materials, plants and fish that can be used in water landscape design.

"The focus will be planning and knowledge. Doing things right the first time ends up saving people money in the end," said Baarschers.

The last instalment of the gardening series will be held on April 28. Cynthia Cook of Forest Glen Herb Farm will talk about fragrant herbs. The hands-on session will give participants the chance to make their own bouquet from sprigs of dry flowers and fragrant herbs.

The gardening series is $40 for the entire series or $12 per session. All sessions will be held at the Lawrence House.

Arts centre hosting gardening series:

"I will hopefully help them maintain a garden with a drought problem," said Schleihauf.

Using perennials will also be discussed in Schleihauf's April 14 session, where she will introduce attendees to drought-resistant perennials as well as the perennial of the year.

The April 21 session will feature water gardens. Jeff Baarschers of Degroot's Nurseries will cover planning, design materials, plants and fish that can be used in water landscape design.

"The focus will be planning and knowledge. Doing things right the first time ends up saving people money in the end," said Baarschers.

The last instalment of the gardening series will be held on April 28. Cynthia Cook of Forest Glen Herb Farm will talk about fragrant herbs. The hands-on session will give participants the chance to make their own bouquet from sprigs of dry flowers and fragrant herbs.

The gardening series is $40 for the entire series or $12 per session. All sessions will be held at the Lawrence House.

Arts and Crafts Movement

Lawrence house bringing in local experts to help with variety of gardening issues
Gardeners unite.
The Lawrence House Centre for the Arts is hosting a gardening series where local gardening experts will share their blooming knowledge.
The series which runs during the month of April will feature four sessions dealing with everything from landscape design to fragrant herbs.
"If I had a dollar for every time someone said low maintenance, well ..." said Paul Churchill, landscape designer with Sipkens Nurseries on London Line.
Churchill will talk about landscape design and colour in gardens when he is the featured expert during the April 7 session.
"First words out of most people's months is low maintenance. I am going to try to make it easy and self-sufficient, generally improving their yard," said Churchill.
The landscape designer said he hopes his session will help those who attend to have the garden they want instead of just looking through magazines at the gardens they wished they had.
Ginny Schleihauf of Gardiners - and the Other Side in Mitton Village will talk about having a healthy garden in dry conditions.

Free Clinic Network

"He loved the area and it seemed to be a good place to reside at this particularly difficult time of his life, which proved to be true," Tanner said. "After his death, I was well settled here and now almost feel like a native."

When she's not busy with the Free Clinic Network, Tanner is also involved with a number of other community organizations, including the Wayne Center for the Arts, St. James Episcopal Church, Women's Committee for the Wooster Symphony Orchestra and Every Woman's House. She enjoys gardening, taking in musical productions, reading, sewing, visiting famous gardens, playing cards, seeing friends and watching movies.

As far as food goes, Tanner said her favorites are "the sweets, especially those of the chocolate kind!" She's not a fan of cooking but understands that it is necessary for life.

"Years ago, I saw a sign in a wonderful grocery store that read 'Practice the art of not cooking' and that has been my motto ever since," she said.

She remembers one Christmas when she took the ham out of the oven and it "bounced across the kitchen floor," and her favorite kitchen tip is one about keeping it simple.

"Never prepare a dish that requires more than one bowl to prepare," Tanner said.

Tickets for A Meal that Heals are available at the Viola Startzman Free Clinic, TJ's and Buehler's locations in Wooster and Orrville. Tanner said this year's goal is to sell 1,000 tickets.

Support Free Clinic with dinner at TJ's

As its membership inches toward 200, the Viola Startzman Free Clinic Network is making progress in an effort to raise funds for an organization that has become so vital to this community.

Formed in February 2007, the Network's main goal is to help with fundraising efforts for the Free Clinic. Since it began, members have raised nearly $126,500 through donations, membership dues and its two annual fundraisers, Clayware for Healthcare and the upcoming A Meal that Heals, said member Marilyn Tanner.

The event, to be held at TJ's Trio of Restaurants on Jan. 24 from 1-9 p.m., gives patrons the choices of a chicken, strip steak or salmon entree, salad, bread and non-alcoholic beverage for $27. It will also feature "celebrity" bartenders, gift basket raffles and local entertainers, with all proceeds going to the Free Clinic.

Membership to the Free Clinic Network is open to anyone in Wayne County, with annual dues at $15.

"Since 2007, members have generously donated over 2,483 hours of service," Tanner said. "Volunteers can help in many ways, including selling and purchasing tickets to the fundraising events."

Tanner, who is retired from the Ford Motor Company's engineering and research center in Dearborn, Mich., moved to Wooster 28 years ago. Her husband, who died of Alzheimer's, was a graduate of The College of Wooster.

"He loved the area and it seemed to be a good place to reside at this particularly difficult time of his life, which proved to be true," Tanner said. "After his death, I was well settled here and now almost feel like a native."

Champion of North culture has died

BRIAN Holland, a broadcasting champion of North East culture in the 1970s and 80s, has died aged 65.

He worked for BBC Radio Newcastle and then moved to Tyne Tees TV where he was a producer and presenter.

In 1979 he became co-presenter with Eileen McCabe of a new show called Come In, If You Can Get In which was billed as a critical look at art, books, film, theatre and television in the region.

He also worked on The Tube, which helped to launch Channel 4 in the early 1980s, and a series of education programmes.

Brian was born in Lynemouth, Northumberland, and left school at 15 to serve an apprenticeship at the local pit.

In his 20s he decided to re-educate himself, attaining six O levels and two A levels inside 15 months.

Explaining his change of direction, he once said: "I just got fed up with bits of the roof falling on top of me." Deciding on a career in the classroom, he went to the Northern Counties Teacher Training College but got sidetracked by broadcasting after setting up a studio in a college annexe.

Before long he was recruited to join the new BBC Radio Newcastle where his first programmes included a history of mining in the North East and a wry weekly review of national news from a Geordie perspective.

He also had a culture review programme that nurtured local musical talent and reviewed the region's entertainment scene.

Brian was a passionate supporter of North East musicians, actors, authors, comedians and artists, backing them on and off-air.

He was equally passionate about Newcastle United and was the PA announcer at St James' Park for all home games in the early 1970s.

He joined Tyne Tees to present and research Come In, If You Can Get In but also presented and produced a series of half hour interviews with celebrities such as Derek Jacobi and Spike Milligan Although he left Tyne Tees in 1988, Brian's love of reading, music and regional arts - and also gardening - continued throughout his life.

Brian was divorced and lived in Lynemouth. He had four children, Julie, Tony, Laura and Jack, from his two marriages.

Martes, Marso 1, 2011

A Southern tradition still in bloom

Bill Talbot, co-owner of the inn, which he describes as a "B&B or beer and breakfast," says bottle trees "have been here all my life, part of the African American superstitions.

"We had so many haints on the compound, we had to try and control them," he says.

Haints are lost souls, angry ancestral spirits, and it's conceivable there are more than a few around Talbot's inn, which is on an old plantation. He rents out rooms and refurbished sharecroppers' shacks to visitors.

Dwyer's trees feature what he describes as "green, blue, red, clear, purple ones, whiskey bottles, Coke, Mountain Dew, medicine bottles, all kinds of weird bottles."

"The haints get up in those bottles and don't get out," Talbot says.

Although bottle trees are said to have arrived in the American South with West African slaves, the superstition is far older, according to Rushing.

Since hollow-glass vessels began appearing in Egypt and Mesopotamia around 1600 B.C., he says, most ancient cultures have believed that bad spirits -- imps and genies, for example -- could be captured in bottles placed around entryways, where they would be destroyed by morning's light.

The idea moved through sub-Saharan Africa to Eastern Europe and eventually to the Americas. But Rushing says German, Irish, and other European immigrants brought their own evil-spirit shibboleths in the form of witch-repelling gazing balls and hex symbols on barns.

Nowadays, Rushing says, gazing balls are garden art, hex symbols are tourist attractions, and bottle trees are "outdoor culture, garden accessories no different from hanging glass ornaments from earlobes."

At the "blue-bottle cottage," the bottle tree is an integral part of the garden.

In warm weather, it's enveloped by pink lilies and yellow verbascum or mullein, mauve geraniums and sunny nasturtiums. In cool weather, it stands out against the dried seed heads and snow.

At Longwood, Kanamee, nicknamed Koa, works on specialty chrysanthemum forms, such as topiaries. Petravich, who grew up on a dairy farm in Schuylkill County, is a research assistant; he breeds clivias, conducts plant trials, and studies ways to eliminate viruses from cannas and chrysanthemums.

Their blue-bottle collection easily tops 100 and, thanks to friends who drink certain types of wine, water, and vodka, continues to grow.

Some bottles get packed away in the attic. Others are set on the sills of curtainless windows in the house, blue sentries in square frames that catch the winter sun full on.

The light is clear and bright in morning and afternoon. In early evening, it glows a deep blue, utterly entrancing, perfect for ensnaring those disquieting haints.